The Fall of Berlin 1945

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Third Reich in January 1945. Frenzied by their terrible experiences with Wehrmacht and SS brutality, they wreaked havoc - tanks crushing refugee columns, mass rape, pillage, and unimaginable destruction. Hundreds of thousands of women and children froze to death or were massacred; more than seven million fled westward from the fury of the Red Army. It was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known.

Who: The A Method for Hiring

Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer a simple, four-step method for hiring with confidence, designed for everyone from the CEO on down. Who shows you how to avoid the most common pitfalls of hiring, how to identify "A Players" - people who can perform their job better than 90 percent of the candidates in their field - and how to make sure the best candidate will be excited to join your organization.

9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America: And Four Who Tried to Save Her

Of the 44 presidents who have led the United States, nine made mistakes that permanently scarred the nation. Which nine? Brion McClanahan, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers and The Founding Fathers' Guide to the Constitution, will surprise listeners with his list, which he supports with exhaustive and entertaining evidence.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real-estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his number-one best-selling Liar’s Poker.

Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power

Trump Revealed offers the most thorough and wide-ranging examination of Donald Trump's public and private lives to date, from his upbringing in Queens and formative years at the New York Military Academy to his turbulent careers in real estate and entertainment to his astonishing rise as the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination. The book will be based on the investigative reporting of more than two dozen Washington Post reporters and researchers.

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

In May 2013, Glenn Greenwald set out for Hong Kong to meet an anonymous source who claimed to have astonishing evidence of pervasive government spying and insisted on communicating only through heavily encrypted channels. That source turned out to be the 29-year-old NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency’s widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security....

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

In this irreverent and illuminating audiobook, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, chance, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and obvious causes, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by chance.

Den of Thieves

Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the biggest names on Wall Street - Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine - created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions - until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice.

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime

Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story, Game Change is a reportorial tour de force that reads like a fast-paced novel. Character driven and dialogue rich, replete with extravagantly detailed scenes, this is the occasion-ally shocking, often hilarious, ultimately definitive account of the campaign of a lifetime.

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency

In late 2010, thousands of hacktivists joined a mass digital assault by Anonymous on the websites of VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal to protest their treatment of WikiLeaks. Splinter groups then infiltrated the networks of totalitarian governments in Libya and Tunisia, and an elite team of six people calling themselves LulzSec attacked the FBI, CIA, and Sony. They were flippant and taunting, grabbed headlines, and amassed more than a quarter of a million Twitter followers.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against "big government" led to the rise of a broad-based conservative movement.

Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

On January 26, 2009, during the depth of the financial crisis and having just completed five years as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy F. Geithner was sworn in by President Barack Obama as the 75th Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Now, in a strikingly candid, riveting, and historically illuminating memoir, Geithner takes listeners behind the scenes during the darkest moments of the crisis.

Too Big to Fail

A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami.

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires

Genovese, Gambino, Bonnano, Colombo, and Lucchese. For decades these Five Families ruled New York and built the American Mafia (or Cosa Nostra) into an underworld empire. Today, the Mafia is an endangered species, battered and beleaguered by aggressive investigators, incompetent leadership, betrayals, and generational changes that produced violent, unreliable leaders and recruits.

Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism

A sharp and illuminating history of one of capitalism's longest-running tensions - the conflicts of interest among public-company directors, managers, and shareholders - told through entertaining case studies and original letters from some of our most legendary and controversial investors and activists.

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story

At its most basic level, Allied Capital is the story of Wall Street at its worst. But the story is much bigger than one little-known company. Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is an important call for effective law enforcement, free speech, and fair play.

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story

Say the name 'Enron' and most people believe they've heard all about the story that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street forever. But in the hands of Kurt Eichenwald, the players we think we know and the business practices we think have been exposed are transformed into entirely new, and entirely gripping, material.

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management

When Genius Failed is the cautionary financial tale of our time, the gripping saga of what happened when an elite group of investors believed they could actually deconstruct risk and use virtually limitless leverage to create limitless wealth. In Roger Lowenstein's hands, it is a brilliant tale peppered with fast money, vivid characters, and high drama.

Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: An International Perspective

In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in the country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth.

Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor

Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway's visionary vice chairman and Warren Buffett's indispensable financial partner, has outperformed market indexes again and again, and he believes any investor can do the same. His notion of "elementary, worldly wisdom" - a set of interdisciplinary mental models involving economics, business, psychology, ethics, and management - allows him to keep his emotions out of his investments and avoid the common pitfalls of bad judgment.

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

A gripping history of banking and the booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the Atlantic, The House of Morgan traces the trajectory of the J. P.Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the private saga of the Morgans and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved. Based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business archives, The House of Morgan is an investigative masterpiece.

Publisher's Summary

CNBC's David Faber takes an in-depth look at the causes and consequences of the recent financial collapse.

And Then the Roof Caved In lays bare the truth of the credit crisis, whose defining emotion at every turn has been greed, and whose defining failure is the complicity of the U.S. government in letting that greed rule the day. Faber painstakingly details the truth of what really happened with compelling characters who offer their first-hand accounts of what they did and why they did it.

Faber explains the events of the previous seven years that planted the seeds for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He begins in 2001, when the Federal Reserve embarked on an unprecedented effort to help the economy recover from the attacks of 9/11 by sending interest rates to all-time lows. Faber also provides an up-close look at where the crisis was incubated and unleashed upon the world - Wall Street - and introduces us to insiders, from investment banks and mortgage lenders to ratings agencies, that unwittingly conspired to insure lending standards were abandoned in the head-long rush for profits.

What the Critics Say

"CNBC's David Faber delivers a clear-eyed look at the origins of the crisis.... As an anchor of the Faber Report, the author was on the front lines of the financial crisis and spoke with many of its key players. (Fortune)

This is easily the best book to understand the broad range of issues concerning the recent economic meltdown in the US. I have read half a dozen books on these issues and this was the best. The Big Short and The World's Greatest Trade were more interesting but you came away confused on what caused the overall problems. Faber takes you through step by step in a clear and interesting manner.

From complex financial instruments to political climate Mr. Faber writes on of the most balanced and professional explanations for the current financial situation. If you want to know how we got here, this is a "must read."

David's writing and story-telling skills are truly remarkable. He includes real stories throughout the book to keep the reader hooked on does an amazing job at explaining the financial nitty-gritty. This book manages to reach that holy ground of being simple without being simplistic.

Also the narration by Dennis is amazing, this book would have been a bore on audio had it not been for the superb narration and production by Audible.

I loved listening to this book. It is shocking, crazy, and diabolical how the subprime mortgage disaster unfolded. Not only that, the author adds in some real life accounts of families who lost their houses, managers who sold mortgages, smart people and dumb people who lost all, or became rich!!! Fantastic. Loved the narration too.

This is by far the best book I have found on the causes of the 2008 financial meltdown. David Faber has managed to do that concisely (the book is less than 200 pages), and clearly (as befits an able journalist, which he is). This book has it all: it provides a clear explanation of "CDO's", "CDS's", leverage ratios, LTV ratios, and AAA credit ratings, all of which are essential to understanding what happened.

It also makes clear that you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand what happened. It was driven by a devil's brew consisting of Wall Street bankers focused on short-term trading profits and bonuses mixed in with unregulated mortgage brokers who were focused on commissions that flowed from the easy money supplied by Wall Street. The brew was seasoned by corrupted rating agencies who allowed the lure of big fees to smudge what had previously been a reputation for professional and objective credit analysis. Congress and the Administration had no clue what was happening except to applaud the expansion of home ownership in the country. The housing market is so big that the fees, commissions, and profits (as well as overlooked risks) generated as the subprime mortgage market grew became enormous; so large that their corrupting influence overcame responsible risk management at most of the major Wall Street firms. Things became so ridiculous that by 2006 all one needed to get a mortgage loan in Orange County, CA was proof that you were a real person and that you were buying a real house. Whether you had the income to pay off your loan over time or a down payment was no longer an issue. Not only ridiculous; it was also disgusting and dangerous.

After listening to around 30 books on 2007/2008, and reading another 9 or 10, this is one I come back to over and over for a clear and cogent reminder of what went wrong, and how it could have been avoided.

I have waited a while before writing the review. I will be more charitable because of the wait. This is the book you would expect from a reporter at MSNBC. It tows the standard media line on the financial crisis and never waivers. The regulators did not have enough power, wall street was greedy, everyone else was a victim. Why this happened now when the regulators have more power than ever and wall street is as greedy as ever is, of course not covered. None the less there is good and interesting information in this book. It has a lot of truth but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
For the other side read (listen to) Sowell’s book “The Housing boom & Bust”. Listen to them both and then make up your own mind.

The full and complete history of the 2008 wall street bailout abd the sub prime market collapse. I have read several books on the 2008 collapse; but this one is by far the best . starting with the Community Revitalization Act and ending with why we are still in the economic duldroms.

Faber does a pretty decent job attempting to paint the landscape before going into excruciating detail about how the mortgage industry's role in the financial meltdown of 2008.

My degree is in Finance and my husband is in the mortgage industry, but I *still* felt out of my depth when he was describing and defining "synthetic CDO's" and "credit default swaps".No worries. I will likely listen to it again. Narrator is easy to listen to, and although there are better "stories" about the financial crisis, this was to me very clear and straightforward in its attempt to treat me as an adult. I don't think that everyone involved in the financial crisis is completely evil, and this book did not treat everyone that way. This was a comparatively objective view.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

It would be a considerable struggle to listen to this in one sitting. There are a host of concepts. However, I did listen to most of it on a five hour road trip, and it make the time FLY. But that is because I was very interested in the subject and this book was trying hard to make it understandable. I did not find my mind wandering... very unusual after four hours of driving!

Any additional comments?

It gave me the confidence to continue to read about the subject, whetted my appetite for more of the same, and I do think I will go back to re-hear it. Now I feel challenged to understand it all a bit better.